Dust clouds and defensive fire

[richardcarr2]

This came up at Club Mongoose this month, dust clouds give stealth 5+ if firing into or out of, to represent the dust cloud playing havoc with sensors e.t.c. The question is, should this also apply to defensive five?

As it stands it doesn't, because stealth only protects from hits taken, and defensive fire causes no hits. But it would seem logical that the same inaccuracy caused by firing at a ship into/ out of a dust cloud would also apply to firing at an incoming drone/ torpedo.

 

[Greg Smith]

This has been answered before. No it doesn't. The rules for dust clouds only apply to ships.

 

[MongooseMatt]

I got it right then

 

[richardcarr2]

No question about its right within the rules.

Question is, should the penalty for firing into/ within a dust cloud also apply to defensive fire. It applies in all other circumstances, including firing at suicide shuttles, but the way stealth is worded (states firing on another ship) excluded defensive fire from being penalised.

It would make sense that if the dust and debris is fouling up your sensors for firing on shuttles and ships, it would do the same for firing on incoming projectiles.

I realise it would add a few more words to the relevant section in the rules, but it seems to me more logical.

 

[Myrm]

It makes a reasonable amount of sense if you look back at what defensive fire simulates and the ECM effects simulate.

For a number of weapons in the original source SFU games the D6 roll gives a sliding scale of damage off a table rather than hit miss (phasers being a particular example, photons a counter example). Defensive fire at range 1 or so with a minor ECM shift still does a honking load of damage to a drone inbound and close compared to what they can absorb, so pushing the damage up a row really doesnt have much effect, if you reduce the damage output by 4 points and thats still enough to kill the drone, the ECM has no effect.

As the table covers further away ranges bands you start to see zeroes in the table and the damage effect of a single shift on the column becomes marked in comparison to say an enemy ships shield where you are interested not in a binary kill/no kill, but how much damage it takes and if it is taking any damage or not.

So as a quick sim of previous games its a fairly simple and reasonable exception to let defensive fire be unaffected.